CHAPTER VII

THF CHOORASUMAS Or DHOLITRA—THE GOTHIS

THE first settlement of the British in the peninsula of Soreth
was made, as we have already hinted, under the auspices of
presumed descendants of the ancient and princely line of
Girnar A younger son of one of the Ras of Soreth, named
Bargee, is said to have received, as his patrimony, four
4 chorashees,' or districts, each containing eighty-four villages ,
one of which, the district of Dhundhooka, was inherited by
his son, Raeesuljee From Merjee, the fourth son of Raee-
suljee, descended the Choorasuma grassia Syesuljee, who, at
the time of Anund Row Guikowar, possessed, or laid claim to,
the villages of Dhollera, Rah Tulow Bunder, Bhangur, Bheem
Tulow, Goomah, and Saibellow, comprising, in all, an area of
about a hundred thousand beeghas Three of these villages
were, however, uninhabited

The district of Dhundhooka had fallen, after the division of
the country between the Viceroy of Ahmedabad and the
Mahrattas, to Kuntajee Bhanday, who held it as a separate
estate It was taken from Kuntajee by Damajee Gmkowar,
and, on that chiefs compelled submission to the Peshwah,
passed into the hands of the couit of Poonah Under the
Mahratta government the unsettled state of the country, and
the continually recurring pecuniary embarrassments of its
ruleis, compelled the komavishdars, or farmers of districts, to
contract upon terms which could be fulfilled only by the most
oppressive exactions The territory entrusted to them was
also exposed to the depredations, not only of the surrounding
states, but of every predatory leader who could attract to his
standard fifty or a hundred men The villages, therefore, fell
to rum, and a large part of them became wholly deserted
Many of the smaller landholders had, at this time, become
anxious to place themselves and their possessions under the
protection of any government surficiently powerful to prevent
the neighbouring chiefs from encroaching on their estates,